advice from an absent parent

baby talk. 1992. ana de la cruz.

Come my child

sit on my lap while i tell you a story

one of your future

a bedtime story, nothing more

don't be scared, the truth don't hurt.

you will grow up to be a beautiful young lady

smart, at times silly

your family will be proud and so should you

but you won't be smiling under your mask.

you will only do that when you're away from that place

not when you're in the freedom

but when you find that way out

with the special ones

the ones that make your smile radiate.

you're going to meet special people that enter your life

they'll slip in while the rest walk by

they'll manage to stay while the others will only linger

but there will come a time when they too leave.

you're going to feel like you are growing up all over again

as if you have to re-lose yourself all over again.

My child, there's more to life than people

but you're going to ignore that fact of life as you grow up

your beautiful memories will fuel you

the ones from when you more of a scribble than a perfected line.

And while you search my child, you will have lots of questions

and i beg of you to have patience with the unresolved

-the loose ends of your big heart and mind

i beg of you to love those questions

i beg of you to not search for the answers that cannot be given to you

you would not be able to live them in their entirety

and my child, the point of it all is to live everything.

Live the questions for days and years to come

and you will serially

someday far in the future,

not too soon, but not too late either

without even noticing

live your way into those answers.

And whether you learn that there's a bond between those you grew with

one that time cannot break

or another of life's hardships

you will see there is nothing as a real as your dream

This time your smile will burst into laughs.

And that is it my child

the ending of my story of you

don't get discouraged my dear

for it will all be okay,

if it wasn't that wouldn't be the end.

when walls talk

There are no particles for the filter to collect, because the grains never had a chance to develop. Today there are no pigments to sieve from the figure a black line has outlined on paper, no splashes of color to separate the image from all the others in the coloring book. The image had been delineated by pencil, perfected for so long that by now everyone else’s contains color.

She thinks it might have been your fault.

That perhaps it was all those years of protection that let nothing catalytic seep through. The solution just settled.

Motionless.

That is her.

If you wish to find her, she’ll be out finding colors.

The mind tightened or mistakenly loosened the screws of thought. What she thought, who she was, what she wasn’t, were reassured and disassembled time and time again in her thoughts. It was her mind that heard the complaints, helped her self diagnose and piece the fabricated fragments together in efforts to regain full function.

She knew it was against the rules to ignore but enough of it had been done to make her disregard no different.

Or so I heard.

Today she discovered the scar, the eraser markings on the outline you both had so carefully developed, and realized the entire image lacked color. And she told herself that with time and time away she will discover, the same way she found gifts in her room or because you found it distasteful handing her things.

Truth is, I wont find those hues so easily, I’ve never truly seen them before.

But if I do, I shall roll around and see which ones stick and form a pattern that’s absorbed beyond the surface.

Something real.

Something filterable and with color to shine.

She told me to tell you.